


Wind and Water and Sky

by honey_wheeler



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Mentions of past violence/death, Show-compliant, Spoilers through S07E07, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 15:24:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11877372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: The Dragon Queen he’d met in Meereen hadn’t known about Shae. She hadn’t known about the whores or his father or Joffrey’s humiliations. She hadn’t even known to call him the Imp. She’d looked at him as Tyrion imagined she might look on a man she could want, and he’d fallen in love with her a bit, right on the spot.





	Wind and Water and Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Based on **[this gifset](http://misshoneywheeler.tumblr.com/post/164478638472)** from S07E07.

He’d known all along that it would be this way. He’s never had much in the way of luck when it comes to matters of women and romance. For a time, that was why he’d favored whores; rather less disappointing when a whore refrains from falling in love with him. But then that had gone wrong too, so very wrong that he still sometimes looks at his hands and wonders if using them to take Shae’s life had been only an awful dream, something he could merely shake off with waking rather than a permanent stain on his soul. Tyrion doesn’t regret killing his father, not for one second. But Shae… That he would undo if he could. 

The Dragon Queen he’d met in Meereen hadn’t known about Shae. She hadn’t known about the whores or his father or his failed marriage or Joffrey’s humiliations. She hadn’t even known to call him the Imp. She’d looked at him as Tyrion imagined she might look on a man she could want, and he’d fallen in love with her a bit, right on the spot.

Then he’d seen the way she looked at Jon Snow, and though he’d never truly hoped, something in him withered that day. However it was Daenerys Targaryen had looked at Tyrion before then, it wasn’t the same.

“I know you are brave,” she says to him. Her cheeks are pinked – from the fire? From the subject of their conversation, the subject of her hesitant interest, “this Jon Snow”? Tyrion doesn’t know. For all that temper and conviction often burst from her mouth as fire does from her dragons’, she can be remarkably close-lipped about some things. “I wouldn’t have chosen a coward as my Hand.”

Her words are kind. Not the false sort of kindness that Tyrion has known before, but a true, deep kindness, one born of respect and admiration and a sweetly apologetic awareness of his feelings for her. Despite everything, it still makes a small, secret part of his heart burn brightly that she should praise him as she looks upon him so fondly. Though they’re worlds apart – in looks, in history, in temperament – she reminds him in some ways of Sansa, who’d always been far kinder to him than a child in her predicament had any need to be.

He’d thought he might love Sansa Stark then. Some nights he’d allowed himself the wretched indulgence of imagining a future with her, one where she came to his bed a willing woman rather than a scared child. Where the children she bore would be whole and healthy and loved, dwarves or no. Where Tyrion could be the father he’d never had, with the family he’d always wanted.

The children he hasn’t yet dared to imagine with Daenerys would be just as loved, just as wanted. Tyrion watches her look away, flustered in a way he’s never seen before, looking almost like the girl she always says she is when she’s dissembling, and his lips curve faintly into a rueful smile.

Perhaps it will always be his lot to love the next one even more.

*  
_title from Unworthy of Your Love, from Assassins_


End file.
